Sunday, July 17, 2011

Study Shows Women Who Gossip are Happier, Healthier

Gossiping may be just what the doctor ordered because it increases progesterone, a hormone that reduces anxiety and stress and makes women happier, according to an article in the London Daily Mail.

The research, at the University of Michigan, paired up 160 female students.

Half were instructed to ask each other questions meant to bring them closer together, while the rest worked in pairs on a joint activity that consisted of proofreading a botany paper. “Half the girls exchanged intimate details of their lives,” explains Stephanie Brown, psychologist and a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, who led the research. “We wanted to see whether becoming close with another person would release the hormone progesterone, which we know is related to long term physical health and has anti-stress effects.”

Words to Live by:

"Invictus" (Latin for "unconquered")
by William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.